Strong growth for Hannibal Industries

Hannibal Industries, a manufacturer of steel pallet racks, (Booth S1827) announced at ProMat that 2016 was a historic year of growth for the company, which manufactures its products in two U.S. locations.

Hannibal has experienced in excess of 30% annualized revenue growth over the last three years. It also has added more than 100 jobs while manufacturing and shipping in excess of 100,000 tons of steel in the previous fiscal period. Last year, the company also expanded its physical footprint in all three of its current locations: Los Angeles, Stockton, Calif., and Hannibal’s new facility in Houston.

At a Wednesday booth visit, Blanton Bartlett, president of Hannibal, said the company is proud to offer an American-made product and grow its employee base. Since 2008, Bartlett said, the company has been 100% employee owned under an employee stock ownership plan (ESOP), with the share value of the ESOP up by 500%.

While being U.S.-made and employee owned have been long-term realities at Hannibal, said Bartlett, what has changed for the company in the last several years is the larger size and scope of warehouse infrastructure projects. “Where once a 150,000-square-foot to 250,000-square-foot project was considered a good-sized project, today, there are more mega projects that might be 1 million square foot in size,” he said. “These changes in the market mean that the larger jobs tend to carry a higher level of complexity, and because of that, an excellent level of communication and collaboration is needed between the vendor, the customer and other entities involved in a warehouse project to ensure the project is successful.”

Hannibal has thrived by having the design and project management expertise to be able to deal with added complexity of larger warehouses, said Bartlett, and by offering a variety of rack products and infrastructure for these facilities.

Contributing to Hannibal’s recent growth, Bartlett added, is increasing demand for racks that meet specific seismic requirements in different localities across the country. Hannibal conducts a thorough analysis of code requirements and seismic conditions to ensure compliance with local, state, national and international regulations, and provides the most cost effective design to meet these requirements. One of its product lines, the “TubeRack” design, is well suited to high seismic locations, said Bartlett.